


there's a lonely blackbird

by openhearts



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 21:00:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18415763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: He kept her panties, she was well aware.  Probably kept them in a drawer with the pearls he’d never returned, like some kind of shrine, maybe mixed in with other trophies, or maybe not.  Beth knows the difference between real and fake worship and she can see Rio trying to hide his, plain as day._Title from They Always Fly Away by Blouse





	there's a lonely blackbird

**Author's Note:**

> This is just . . . 3k words of rambling about Beth and Rio and Beth's mercurial moods about Rio's mercurial moods and power struggles and warped flirting.
> 
> And then orgasm denial.
> 
> *shrugs*

She’d understood how this was going to work when he’d popped out of that yellow Corvette like a whac-a-mole game - and then proceeded to play it out all over the car in his latest show of dominance.  

 

“You didn’t tell him yet?”

 

“No.”

 

“Aw, come on, ma, it’s too good.”

 

“Don’t.”

 

It was a long look he gave her.  Something considering. Evaluating maybe.  And she saw in his squint, though the cutting grin never faltered, when something softened.  He wasn’t there to ruin her. Maybe to ruin Dean, if that was convenient. But not at her expense, necessarily.  Which still just seemed like overkill at this point, but Rio never seemed to do anything by half measures. She understood that about him by now at least.

 

Still.  Even while he had obviously followed her there, snuck or broke in, laid in wait in that car, and proceeded to gleefully threaten her and them both, he was easy to tame.  In a way. He threatened, she answered, and he swerved. Swerved them both into  _ partnership _ and she can’t say for sure if this was always his plan, if leaving her all the money was ever a genuine offer, but it doesn’t matter now.  He may have put the kingdom in her name but he never took his off of it.

 

She can’t help but think how differently it could have gone if Dean just . . . wasn’t there for whatever reason.  If she and Rio had had this meeting anywhere else, at any other time. This isn’t how the two of them operate anymore, it’s much more . . . quiet.  But it happens, it all happens, and she’s screaming  _ you can have whatever you want, just STOP _ .  And he pulls up short, brow gleaming a little with sweat already, all sinister confidence.

 

And they’re back in each other’s pockets again.

 

\---

 

If she’s seen it once she’s seen it a thousand times.  She’s almost smacked both her sons upside the head for it multiple times.  With Dean she eventually started leaving the room. But then he would follow, so she’d worked on a stare so withering that if it didn’t teach him to stop altogether at least shut him up in the moment.  

 

Rio, on the other hand, is yet untrained.  

 

“You need some time to think it over?  Maybe a quick bathroom break? No?”

 

Like a dog with a bone. 

 

“No.”

 

No, she will not have her pigtails pulled.  No he does not get to trot this out in front of  _ her _ people, her  _ family _ , just to get a rise out of her.  No getting up her skirt doesn’t mean  _ anything _ now, except that they both know what it sounds like when the other comes.

 

If she hadn’t had two sons, and a husband who’s main conflict management techniques are distraction and humor, maybe Rio could have rattled her more.  He has, in the past. Gotten her flustered and shaky and stuttering. But a funny thing happened when he fucked her in that bathroom, dirty walls and music thumping outside.  He kept her panties, she was well aware. Probably kept them in a drawer with the pearls he’d never returned, like some kind of shrine, maybe mixed in with other trophies, or maybe not.  Beth knows the difference between real and fake worship and she can see Rio trying to hide his, plain as day.

 

It’s real.  It’s hers. 

 

She’s going to take it.

 

\---

 

So maybe she’s glowing a little when she passes him that duffle of cash, maybe she’s forgotten how big his hands are in the time since they’ve been all over her thighs, maybe this thing they shove and tug at didn’t disappear when she came shuddering, fingers dug into the back of his neck and her back shoved hard against that bathroom wall.  Maybe there’s something left to mine. Something in how he  _ gazes _ down at her, grinning, lighting up that tiniest bit brighter when she sniffs at him and says it again:

 

( _ Do you trust me? _ )

 

“No.” 

 

\---

 

He’s  _ cute _ which is.  Unnerving. It doesn’t quite feel like this  _ guy _ she’s talking to about  _ labeling it _ is even from the same hemisphere as Rio, the Rio who . . . who shot Dean in the chest.  Somehow that bathroom felt like the one place where all the version of him converged. Where they all, in unison, wanted her.  Had her.

 

It’s a relief when he brings up the body he retrieved, and that he’s keeping it case it might become useful.  This feels familiar, for a given value of Rio-ness, even when he steps in, hand spreading over her hip, chin dipped to almost press his forehead to hers.

 

“Just picture everybody naked.”

 

Yeah.  That’s about right.

 

\---

 

But then, of course.  He’s Rio.

 

No half measures.

 

Taking back the money wasn’t enough.  Sixty percent of her family business isn’t enough.  Holding Boomer’s body isn’t enough.

 

No, he needs more.  More to shore up his position, more ammunition to use against her, his  _ partner _ .

 

And then the sensation that lances through her when she sees him laughing with that woman in the parking lot, embracing, all of it, it’s . . . not as violent as she wants it to be.  Ruby and Annie rushing to explain, to diffuse, doesn’t feel right either. It was a quick screw in a  _ bathroom _ , she hardly feels her honor has been offended.  If Dean had made a fool of her by having other women, Rio’s done nothing more than keep up expectations.

 

It’s not surprising.  Given her track record, of one.

 

Annie and Ruby don’t believe her, and she can’t put it into words anyway.

 

It’s not that she cares who he sleeps with, not in the way they think.

 

He’s been in and out of her house, her life, her livelihood, her nightmares, for  _ a year _ .  Somewhere in that amount of time, people start to become familiar to you, even to your subconscious.  She’d stopped startling in shock when he’d appeared at her house, in her car, on park benches, on bar stools.  He just became this peripheral fixture in her life. In all parts of it, not just the places she ventured to when she was desperate or ready or determined.  He showed up in the soft places, the bright sunny days, the sad and tired moments. 

 

The only thing Rio’s shown her of himself, of the him that exists outside of her and money, is his son, and that was  _ still _ a ploy, still something he designed to aid in his control of her.  Anyone could forget that he was a real whole person after that kind of sustained performance of other-ness, of singular focus and cobra-strike purpose.  She still doesn’t know his last name. Or if Rio is actually his name.

 

He’s a person, and he has people in his life who know him in completely different ways, and Beth’s not sure he meant for her to see that, in that way, at that time.  She never wanted to  _ care _ and she hadn’t until now, not even after that bar bathroom and hearing his groan of release, wiping his come from her thighs.  

 

But something’s been broken now, flipped, and.

 

Now he’s nothing but a man.

 

\---

 

He rises and starts across the lawn quickly and in his stalking ground-eating steps it’s hard to make herself believe what’d she’d seen first:  him sitting, head hanging, hands limp, waiting. Tired.

 

Like she’d been after that stop sign when he’d been waiting across the street and she’d approached like the magnet to him that she was, teary and rambling and lost.  

 

He doesn’t show it that way, but the gun under her chin might as well be his thumb nudging through the trails of her tears in her dining room, Dean gurgling bloody breath’s over Rio’s shoulder.

 

Part of her wants to grab the gun and hold it to her chin for him, show him she knows how weak for her he is, how tired and hungry.  He’s beaten, and he can’t show it, not with Dean there, not with the mask of their shared history still clamped on hard.

 

She’ll break him.  It’ll be a relief for them both. 

 

\---

 

It is profoundly easy to get him to agree to the fifty-fifty split.  

 

Rio goes soft as melting buttercream and leaves with all the bravado of a kid from the principal’s office.  She’s as happy for the deal as she is glad to have him stuck under this new pushpin where at least she can learn what to expect now.  He’ll be her partner when she makes him be, and it’s unsettlingly easy, all she has to do is know what she’s talking about, which she does.  He’s been making sure she does.

 

She’d thought this was about a separation of business and pleasure, that taking sex out of the equation was going to be her way of maintaining an upper or at least even hand.  But that look on his face as she forced him into agreeing to fifty-fifty, slack and entranced and nearing  _ sated _ was too much like the one she’d spied in the mirror as he approached her in that bathroom.

 

\---

 

It’s another night in the same office, the same desk, the same her hitting behind it.  But now she knows.

 

He advances on her, prowling, and she glances over.

 

“Stop.”

 

Like he’s been yanked by a shepherd’s hook.

 

“You don’t want it?  After all this?”

 

“Rio?” she looks up at him, head pillowed on the back of the chair.  “Do you think being able to have sex if I just say the word is  _ exciting _ to me?  I’ve been married for twenty years.  I could have sex everyday and twice on Sundays if I wanted it.”

 

“You tellin’ me he fucked you like I did?” he’s incredulous, rightly, but he’s already faltering.

 

“No, he didn’t.  He fucked me like he loved me.  Some version of me.”

 

“This where I’m supposed to tell you, ‘oh I know you so much better, baby’?”

 

“No.”

 

“Good.  You confuse the hell outta me.”

 

Rio scoffs a little and takes a seat, leaning back, comfortable.  He rests one ankle on his opposite knee and they watch each other, something easy and almost warm in the silence.  Beth rocks in the chair, considering.

 

“You know, you, and him.  You’re the only two people I’ve ever had sex with?”

 

Rio swallows, visibly unnerved.

 

She cackles suddenly.  “What, does that scare you?  You think I’m gonna go all psycho girlfriend now?”

 

“. . . are you?”

 

“No,” she sighs, shaking her head lazily.  “I don’t care enough about you to go to the trouble.”  She rolls her head lazily toward him, putting on a faux look of surprise and remorse.  “Oh, sorry. Was that mean?”

 

He grits his teeth, through a fake smile, and she can see the flare of his nostrils, the hitch in his breath.

 

“You think screwing me once, for, what was it, five minutes?  In that bathroom . . . you think  _ one orgasm _ suddenly puts you on par with my husband of twenty years?  I’ve had four of his children. That’s how deep inside me he is, and it has nothing to do with length.  It doesn’t matter whether he’s more of a piece of shit than you are or not, he got there first.”

 

Rio’s eyes blaze through the slits of his lids, fists clenched.  She watches him carefully, tilts her head a little, waits. 

 

Something clicks.  It’s almost audible.

 

His posture, his expression, none of it’s changed persay, but.  He’s with her now.

 

“You were the first man to fuck me in five years but you weren’t last since.”

 

Beth takes a breath, suddenly lightheaded, these words pouring out of her that she can’t predict, can’t pinpoint their origin.  Somewhere deep. Somewhere dark.

 

“What-”

 

“After I got my fifty percent I went home, told him to take off his pants, and I lifted my skirt-”

 

“No-”

 

“Uh huh, right at the kitchen sink, right where I was standing when I saw you waiting for me in my yard like some pathetic wannabe stalker, just waiting for me to notice you.  And then you waved that gun around like either of us believe you could ever-”

 

“ _ No _ -”

 

“Oh, what?”  The fake innocence again, mocking and cruel, and his hands are loosening, his brow going furrowed.  “You wanna say it out loud?”

 

She can see it all over him, realization dawned bright, gut-punched and reverent and not at all in-control.

 

“No.”

 

“Rio,” she cajoles, a little warningly.

 

“. . . no,” his voice is above a whisper, but just.

 

“Say it.”

 

“Elizab-”

 

“Say.  It,” they’re talking over each other now, but she waits.  Waits him out, until his eyes lower. 

 

“I can’t.”

 

“Can’t what?”

 

“I wasn’t gonna smoke you on your lawn at your own house, with my gun, with your family inside.  I didn’t get where I am by bein’a dumbass.”

 

He’s flickered back to one of the Rio’s from last year, maybe the one who gave her the  _ flip my game _ speech when she was high on washing half-a-mil and wanted to poke at him, figured if she was cute enough he’d acquiesce.  And he had, with a little wheedling.

 

_ Oh _ , she thinks, realizing.   _ This  _ has _ been going on a long time. _

 

“You didn’t end up where?  Here? In my office?”

 

He swallows, tenses like he’s trying to keep from saying it.  “I didn’t kill you ‘cuz I can’t.”

 

“Because you need me for your business?” she finishes for him, eyes widened.  They both already know.

 

“Because I need you.”

 

“Yeah,” she murmurs, swiveling around in her chair and leaning her elbows on the desk, chin cupped in one palm, slouching a little, lazy.  “Stand up.”

 

He does, slowly, but still much, much more easily than she expects.  He knows where this is going. He’s ready.

 

“Take off your pants,” she says softly, lightly.

 

His hands go to his belt immediately, clumsily.

 

“Not all the way,” she adds, “just . . . enough.  You know.”

 

He “mm-hm”’s in answer, voice husky deep in his throat.  His zipper is loud and he has to ease his pants down carefully, already straining.

 

Beth hums quietly, tilting her head, observing with . . . interest but not really anticipation.

 

“You know what’s funny?” she asks.  He’s tugging his boxer briefs down to his thighs.  “I didn’t see Dean’s dick up close before the first time we had sex either.  I mean, we were teenagers. We didn’t do a lot before that. Just kid stuff really.”

 

Rio takes himself in hand almost cautiously, like he thinks he can do it without her noticing even though she’s watching his every move.  She licks her lips.

 

“I was so young.  I was seventeen. Can you imagine me at seventeen?”

 

The sound that claws up from his throat is - pained.  Beth chuckles, mouth closed.

 

“Go on,” she adds, casual, catches his eye and nods, a politely encouraging smile as he spits into his palm and starts stroking his dick in earnest, hissing in a breath.  

 

“It hurt, that first time.  So much, it was awful.”

 

“He didn’t,” Rio’s breathing is already heavy in the quiet, “ _ ah _ , he didn’t take care of you?”

 

Beth snorts.  “Please. He was an eighteen year old boy.  He didn’t know any better.”

 

“You were- so wet for me, though.”

 

“Mm,” Beth hums noncommittally in agreement.  “I was drunk.”

 

“You were waitin’ for it, ma.  You were itchin’ for it.”

 

Beth shrugs, her slouch slipping further, one pinkie finger playing over her bottom lip as she watches Rio’s wrist twist when he reaches the end of his dick on every pump.  The silence drags, Rio’s heavy breathing and the sounds of his clothes rustling with his movements, and Beth pushes back from the desk in her rolling chair, stands and makes her way around it slowly.  Rio groans in anticipation, taking a step toward her. 

 

“Stop.  Stay there.”  Beth leans her hips against the edge of the desk for a moment, makes sure he’s listening.  She walks slowly toward him again and stops this time an arm’s length away, too far to touch.

 

“Stop,” she murmurs again, watching his face even though his hand is still moving, gripping his dick and working faster.  “Rio?”

 

He groans, shaky and close.

 

“Stop now.”

 

“What, I-”

 

“Ah-ah.”  she does touch him, tips of her fingers to his elbow, stilling,  He reaches for her and she permits him to grip at her arm, the other on her shoulder as he leans into her heavily.

 

“‘lizabeth,  _ come on _ -”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Please.”

 

“No,” she says it softly, gently, her hands on him briefly comforting before she pushes him away, disentangling them.  She side steps him, skirt barely swishing past his rucked down pant legs and dangling belt, only to pick up her bag from the chair.  

 

“Lock up on your way out.”

 

She leaves the door behind her open.  The clicks of her heels echo throughout the space with every step.

 

\---

 

It’s late enough when she gets home that Dean is passed out on the couch in front of the TV.  Beth carefully takes off her heels on the mat by the door and carries her shoes as she tiptoes down the hall to her bedroom.

 

It hadn’t taken all that long to start thinking of it as just hers, even if she still sleeps only on the right side of the bed.  

 

She shuts the door, leans against it, and lets out a deep breath.  It feels like she’s been holding it since the office, since Rio standing there with his shirt still on and his pants down, rutting into his own fist and near-whimpering.  She’s still holding her shoes in one hand when she slides the other between her legs over her skirt just for something, anything, all the pent up energy roiling and churning inside her, and once she starts she drops everything clumsily, peels out of her blazer and leaves it all in a heap on the floor.  She climbs over the bed to her night table drawer and flops on her back right there on top of the bedspread, skirt of her dress a mess around her waist, panties still half-on, diagonal across the bed and biting her lip hard to keep from keening when she comes.


End file.
